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also... youtube and podcasts

oh yeah... never "dump out" beer. let it ferment the full time... what have you got to lose at this point.

the go to books for starting out are 1. The Joy of Home Brewing by Charlie Papazian 2. How to Brew by John J. Palmer. either, or both, is fine. i started with "How to Brew". you can get them online or ibooks, read the first couple chapters to get started, and then off you go.

welcome to our nightmare.

hey unionrdr... good to see you... been a while. also... i think that "officially" starsan is a no-rinse cleaner

if it tastes better after waiting, then wait. :)

i use a bucket simply because it's easier to clean than a carboy. for bottling the container doesn't actually matter and, your technique is fine... anything that fills the tube with fluid, so that the siphon works, is fine.

blowoff tube is your best friend in the first week of fermentation. :)

using half the hops will be perfectly drinkable. if you want you can use something like beersmith, or ibrewmaster, and figure out the EXACT amount for the IBU's you want to achieve. i brew only 1 gallon batches, so i'm always "down-sizing" recipes... the only thing that doesn't easily scale...

then there is no such thing as "sparging" for extract brews. where did you get those instructions from? do you, perhaps, have some steeping grains, or something?

just get a kettle. the thermometer won't matter after the first couple uses... all water boils at the same temp. learn how to use a siphon tube, and "bag it" with the spigot, too. will save you a bunch of money

yep... this what do you have to lose but the price of a packet of yeast

i do ALL my brewing on an electric stovetop, in the kitchen. of course it's hot enough to boil water... it's just going to take a while... but once it's there it will stay there. and don't bother with the Fizz drops. prime your beer all at once, not one drop at a time in the bottles...

i wasn't trying to be harsh... i get it, honest. i guarantee you that the hardest thing for any person posting here to do is to just "leave it the heck alone". if we weren't the "tinkering" type, we wouldn't be here. i'm just telling you (from painful experience) that the more you mess with...

i buy a lot less bad beer... :) i like to go to the local craft beer store (it's less than a mile away), and try new things once in a while and, i drink my own. since i brew small batches (1 gallon), I don't have lots of brew hanging around, so i don't feel bad. sort of the best of both...

quit sniffing the beer... resist the urge. just leave it the heck alone and enjoy that constant "burp" sound if you are using a blow-off tube. don't freaking touch it for at least a week (preferably 2). what benefit is there to taking a reading tomorrow? the dumbest thing we do, especially...

my advice... if you are using a hop bag (preferably on a string) and can pull them out, then that's ok, but don't put anything INTO that boiled wort. it's sterile and pasteurized at this point... don't put anything in there that hasn't been sanitized, or you don't intend to leave there. in...

relax... you can't hurry it. just leave it for at least another week or two... if you simply can't resist messing with it, then do a secondary fermentation to get it off the yeast cake, and let THAT rest a couple weeks. either way, it's a couple weeks. and then into the bottles. :)

this^^^ the fact is that lots of extract brewers don't even add the extract until the very end of the boil (last 10 minutes)... and it's not uncommon to add things right at the very end of the boil... as long as the water is still above 160, and stays there a while... you will be ok.

Mine is called "Masking Tape Brewing" because when i started brewing, i used masking tape for the labels on all the bottles. :)